1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a trapping area creating method of creating a band-shaped trapping area extending along the color identification boundary of an image, a trapping area creating apparatus for creating a trapping area, a trapping area creating program for causing a computer to execute the trapping area creating method when the trapping area creating program is incorporated into the computer, and a trapping area creating program storage medium storing the trapping area creating program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, there is known a method of creating an image by a multicolored printing using a plurality of machine plates associated with a plurality of primary colors. In the event that on an image created by such a multicolored printing there is a color identification boundary in which colors near two primary colors are close to one another, it often brings about a blank space on the color identification boundary owing to misregistration among a plurality of machine plates. In view of the foregoing, hitherto, there is performed a trapping of compensating for misregistration between machine plates by means of edging one or both of two color areas contacting with each other at a color identification boundary in which colors near two primary colors are close to one another, at a band-shaped trapping area along the color identification boundary.
Recently, as a computer technology advances, it often happens that editing of an image created by a multicolored printing is performed on a computer. In this case, it is troublesome for editors to severally create the trapping area. Accordingly, there is desired a trapping area creating program for automatically creating a trapping area from image data.
As a method of creating trapping area by such a trapping area creating program, there is proposed, for example, a creating method in which an image is divided into a large number of small areas as a lattice, existence as to a color identification boundary is decided for each small area, and the small areas associated with the color identification boundary are coupled with one another to create a band-shaped trapping area.
In order to create a band-shaped trapping area, it is necessary that an image be divided into a sufficiently large number of small areas. However, dividing the image into so large number of small areas causes an amount of computation to be enormous. This involves a problem that a creation of the trapping area is slow down.